CIA has built vast anti-Russian spy network in Ukraine – NYT — RT World News

The New York Times revealed in its Sunday article that the CIA has turned Ukraine into one of its main assets in spying on Russia over the decade since the 2014 Maidan coup.

American specialists financed and organized a network of secret bases on the territory of the former Soviet state and made Kiev part of “Secret Alliance” The newspaper said, quoting a group of current and former officials in the United States, Ukraine and Europe, that it is against Moscow.

Ukraine currently hosts at least 12 secret spy bases located near the Russian border, which collect all kinds of information about Russia, as well as coordinating drone strikes and a network of operatives supposedly operating inside Russia.

New York Times journalists were able to visit one of the forward operating bases located in an underground bunker. The reporters said the place was being used to eavesdrop on Russian military communications and supervise drone strikes on Russian territory. The New York Times, citing a senior Ukrainian intelligence official, General Sergei Dvoretsky, said that the base was funded and equipped by the CIA.

The CIA specially equipped the base with communications equipment and large computer servers, the general told the New York Times, adding that the bunker was used to hack Russian, Belarusian and Chinese satellites.

According to the newspaper, the CIA and other US intelligence agencies provided Ukraine with information about Russian troop movements and missile strikes throughout the ongoing conflict between Moscow and Kiev.

Active cooperation between the two countries' intelligence services began almost immediately after the 2014 Maidan coup, and Kiev has since turned into a “One of Washington's most important intelligence partners against the Kremlin.” The paper said.

The New York Times said that after the coup, the Ukrainian authorities actively sought America's approval by handing over Russian secrets to them in private, as the United States had little interest in assets that could not produce any valuable intelligence information about Moscow.

In 2015, the then head of Ukrainian military intelligence, General Valery Kondratyuk, handed over a batch of top-secret files, including information on the Russian Navy's Northern Fleet and nuclear submarine designs, at a meeting with the CIA's deputy station chief in Kiev.

A year earlier, the then head of Ukraine's internal security service, Valentin Nalyvychenko, who had been appointed by the post-coup authorities, reached out to the heads of the domestic CIA and MI6, seeking a tripartite partnership and asking them for help. He has to rebuild his service from scratch.

In 2016, the CIA began training an elite Ukrainian commando force known as Unit 2245. Gen. Kirill Budanov, who currently heads Ukrainian military intelligence, is also a former member of the CIA-trained Unit 2245, according to the New York Times.

American spies also provided specialized training to members of the Fifth Directorate, a paramilitary unit created by Kiev to conduct operations against Russia. The New York Times said members of this hit squad were involved in some high-profile assassinations in Donbas, including the assassination of Commander Arsen Pavlov, also known as “Motorola,” who was blown up in an elevator in 2016. Nalyvaychenko also revealed the existence of the hit squad in an interview. Separate with The Economist in September 2023.

US intelligence agents also played an active role in Kiev's response to the start of the Russian military operation in February 2022. CIA agents remained at a designated location in western Ukraine while the US was evacuating its personnel from the country before the conflict.